


Six

by snowshus



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-17 06:06:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17554829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowshus/pseuds/snowshus
Summary: We save ourselves





	Six

**Author's Note:**

  * For [facethestrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/facethestrange/gifts).



Joyce doesn’t remember much after the car accident. She was in a coma at first and after she woke up all the drugs she needed to be on kept her memories hazy and fragmented. Time didn’t really exist for her then, just vague moment of lucidity between the haze. She remembers there was nurse, with warm comforting hands on her shoulder. She’d leaned close and whispered, “It’s okay, I promise everything is going to be okay.” The memory fades out after that. It gets jumbled and confused and falls out of sequence. 

Then when day she wakes up feeling human again in a normal bed in her aunt’s house in Hawkins, Indiana. 

They never talk about how she got there. They don’t talk about the past at all. They don’t talk about her parents or what must have been a few years that she spent in the hospital. As Joyce grew up the few memories she had faded farther and farther until it seemed little more than a dream. Her life was divided into before the accident and after she came to Hawkins, and the bit in between might as well have not happened. 

Then she gets the phone call. 

“Hello, I’m looking for a Joyce…” There’s a pause and Joyce can hear the shuffling of papers, a thud and a distant “shit” before the voice continues “Dane?” 

Joyce almost drops the phone herself, she hasn’t heard that name since she was ten. “Yes, this is - I go by Byers now.” She replies.

“Oh, sorry. My name is Rachel Branch, I work for the Chicago Post, I wanted to ask you some questions about your father’s research?”

“My father’s what?”

“He’s research for the department of energy?” Rachel prompts.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Branch, my father died when I was very young, I don’t know anything about any research.”

“I think you may know more then you realize, if you don’t mind I’d like meet with you.”

\--

Rachel Branch’s office is a bit of mess. Old take out boxes are piled in and near the trash and stacks of newspaper clippings, books of neurology, and photocopies of scientific publications dating back to the fifties cover every inch of the desk. Strewn across the papers, are photographs mostly of people Joyce doesn’t recognize, but there’s two that stand out. One is a picture of her. It’s paper clipped to a folder with #6 written on it. The second is a picture of her parents with the much younger but still familiar face of the man who made her life a living hell last year. 

A woman, about Joyce’s age, maybe a little younger bursts into the office, her coffee slipping over the lip of her stained mug, just as Joyce is reaching over to pick the second photo up. 

“Sorry I’m late. Thank you so much for coming. I’m Rachel.” The woman introduces herself as she moves around to the far side of the desk.

“It’s fine. I’m not sure I’m going to be any help, with….whatever your doing.” Joyce replies.

Rachel pushes the papers on her desk into a pile to make room to put her coffee down. “Do you know anything about psychic abilities?”

Joyce freezes. She’s never been a great liar but she agreed to silence in exchange for her son. The Hawkins Research Lab is gone now and she’s not sure if the deal they struck still stands. In addition she doesn’t who may or may not still be after Jane and what force they might bring if she lets anything slip.

“You’re father’s research was mostly in that area,” Rachel prompts. “He’s papers are largely about theories of expanding the abilities of the mind through things like meditation and certain drugs. His last paper though, it’s a bit different. It’s about the generational effects.”

“The what?”

“Generational effect, like passing down abilities, the last paper he wrote suggests not only that it is possible but that the second generation may be exponentially more powerful.”

“I’m sorry, I really don’t know anything about this stuff.”

“Do you have any unique talents, Ms. Byer?” Rachel levels a look at her.

“What, no.”

“You know you’re mother worked closely with your father, uncredited for the most part.” 

“Like I said,” Joyce repeats tightly standing up, “I didn’t know much about what my father was doing and I was very young when they died.”

“Right, about that, I don’t think their deaths were an accident.”

“What?” Joyce falls back into the chair.

“Look I’m not very good at subterfuge and you clearly don’t trust me, which is smart if I’m right, so I’m just gonna lay this out for you - no secrets, no misdirection and hope you’ll trust me afterwards. I think your father and mother were experimenting with mind altering practices and substances on themselves possibly including while your mother was pregnant. They discovered you had inherited whatever abilities they were trying to access. I think they were killed so that this man, Dr. Brenner - your father’s research partner - could study you. You were declared dead, Ms. Byers. I have the death certificate for Joyce Dane.” Rachel hands over a piece of paper. “I also, however, have gotten a hold of files for a subject six - a girl who looks extraordinarily similar to the dead Joyce Dane.” 

Rachel shuffles through the pile of papers for a moment before she pulls out two photos. The first is the photo Joyce had noticed earlier of herself in the hospital bed, the second is an old yearbook photo from the year before the crash.

“Three years later, Darlene Horowitz, previously Darlene Balan, the widowed sister-in-law of Ellen Dane ne Balan, adopts a girl named Joyce. Around this time subject six goes missing. There seems to have been a short search for her, but nothing turns up. I mean I think it’s pretty obvious here that you were subject six, and you’ve already confirmed to me that you used to be known as Joyce Dane - a girl who supposedly died thirty years ago. Do I have it right?”

Joyce picks up the photo of her in the hospital. “I don’t remember, I don’t- I remember the car wouldn’t stop and suddenly everything was spinning and then--it’s just a haze until I wake up at my aunt’s.”

“Do you have any talents, can you do anything that you shouldn’t be able to?”

Joyce shakes her head.

“Have you ever tried?”

Joyce looks up at that. “I-no, I guess not.”

They talk for a little bit longer, but as Joyce had said, there’s very little she actually remembers and she’s pretty sure besides the fact of her continued existence she couldn’t add much to whatever story Rachel is putting together, not without revealing Jane’s existence. The mystery of her parents, of her missing time tempts her, but it is all old dusty yellowed newspaper. Jane is now and her safety is more important than a truth that won’t help anyone still alive.

There is one question that still at nags at her through the long drive back to Hawkins. Has she ever tried using powers? She thinks first of WIll and the christmas lights, but that wasn’t her. That was all Will. She’d thought it was just something about the way energy moves between the worlds, but perhaps it had been just Will, and if he had unusual talents then maybe she did too. 

It’s a quiet when she gets home. She’d arranged for Will to spend the night with Mike, and she’d called three times already to make sure he was still there and still safe. Jonathan was at work and wouldn’t be home until late. The house is silent except the hum of electricity.

Joyce runs a bath. It’s not exactly a sensory deprivation tank, but she’s not sure she really wants this to work anyways. She straps on one of those sleep masks and turns the radio to a low static and tries to open her mind, or whatever. She feels silly. This is dumb, she’s not special, she’s never been special, just dumb troubled Joyce who would never amount to anything. It’s just….maybe there is something to what Rachel was saying.

It takes a while and truth be told Joyce isn’t so much opening her mind as she is drifting to sleep when she’s suddenly somewhere else. Jane has sort of explained the in between place she goes when she’s looking for people. This is not that. This is supply closet, in what appears to be a doctors office. There are stacks of patient gowns folded and stacked on the shelves next to rolls of bandages and boxes of needles. Joyce is still naked so that looks like a good place to start. 

The hallway outside the closet is empty, thankfully and Joyce starts walking towards the end that has the sign for stairs, checking all the doors as she goes. She pauses at the door labelled women’s locker room, before sliding in. The room is thankfully empty and the clock on the wall reading 3:00 is probably the reason why. The lockers are all locked or empty but in the corner she sees a hamper with a biohazard label on it. Inside are a few pairs of scrubs and a shirt. She grabs a pair of scrubs and the shirt and washes the unidentifiable stains off of them in the shower and dries them with a hair dryer and paper towels as best she can. Dressed in clothes that makes it look like she belongs makes her feel more confident walking down the hall towards the exit. 

Down at the end of the hall the rooms are numbered: 3, 4, 6. Joyce pauses outside the room with number six on it. She pushes the door open and there she is, thirty years younger with sensor wires taped all around her head. Younger Joyce opens her eyes and Joyce knows what she has to do. 

It is surprisingly easy to get herself out of the facility. The nurse on duty is wrapped up in her television and the guard is sleeping. It only takes three cars before she finds one who left the keys in the center. The old car doesn’t handle the way she’s used to but she manages to make it out and they’re on their way. The road sign says she’s 100 miles from the border of Indiana and it’s probably going to take all day, but soon she’ll be in Hawkins. Soon she’ll be safe.

Aunt Darlene answers the door, and doesn’t ask questions. “Matty’s sister was always into weird science stuff, I never understood,” she explains to Joyce after they get younger Joyce into bed. “I’m just glad I’ve got at least one of you back.”

Joyce takes the stolen car and just drives as far as away as she can, until she can’t stay awake any longer. She drives carefully off the road, and hopes it take a long time for anyone to find the car. Then she closes her eyes and falls asleep. 

She wakes with a jolt, back in her bath. The water now freezing and Jonathan knocking on door.

“Mom? Are you in there? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good Jonathan, I just fell asleep in the tub, I’ll be out in a second.”

“Okay? I’m gonna make some coffee, do you want some?”

“Sure.” Joyce leans back and stares at the ceiling for a moment. She should probably call Rachel and maybe Aunt Darlene in the morning.


End file.
